Roller Stand Upgrade

[reible]

I saw some posts on roller stands/flip-top stands in the last few days. This brought to mind a project I posted else where about 3 months ago. If you saw it "there" don't bother looking here as it is the same post.

Hi,

I have an old roller stand that I sometimes use when cutting longer pieces. A few years back it tipped over and broke the part that keeps the legs apart and the company no longer makes these or sells the plastic part.... So it sat a few years until I decided to make a plywood part out of scrap and got it working again. However it is still the same function and can again tip over like it did in the old days. The issue is that when you put the stand up and adjust the height you can be just below level of the saw table but not too much. Then when cutting something warp or something the sags it can hit at or below the center line of the roller... and over it goes the stand.

I have been thinking of getting a new stand with the flip top design but still have not. So I decided to make up an attachment for my roller stand that would help with the capture problem.

This was a kind of "free of design" project, more a let's make something and see how it works. I had a plastic cutting board in stock (I use then for other things like this). Some scraps of plywood and away I went. Things did not work the way I expected and the part would just fall off or rather eject itself after it would return to the angle position after being flat. It would also sometime tip the wrong way after the material passed over. Rather then starting over I just added on... a few strips of pine here and there, a few pieces of plywood and it was working better but still not quite right. The final tweek was the addition of a magnet out of an old hard disk drive... they are powerfull and you have to work at pulling it off now.

So I have something working but it not elegant. I know I can do better. I thought I would share this with you folks and maybe some of you will be willing to under take a simular project and report back someday.

Of course I have pictures so take a look at:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/12199425@N02/sets/72157606560757702/

Ed

[doug45601]

Great! Nice job. I have also encountered the same problem with long sagging board and had to resort to using 2 stands in the past.. Since you have presented some great pictures, I'm going to attempt to make something like that for my stands!

thanks for posting..